Book Recommendations

For Students

Chetin, Helen. Angel Island Prisoner 1922. Berkeley: New Seed Press, 1982. A young Chinese girl, her mother, and baby brother are detained on Angel Island while awaiting permission to enter the United States. Elementary school age.

Currier, Katrina Saltonstall. Kai's Journey to Gold Mountain. Tiburon: Angel Island Association, 2004. This picture book for young children is based on former detainee and San Francisco resident Albert Wong’s experience on Angel Island as a twelve-year old as he leaves China and journeys alone to “Gold Mountain” or America, to live with his father.

Hoobler, Dorothy & Thomas. The Chinese American Family Album. London: Oxford University Press, 1994. This resource traces the experiences of Chinese Americans using historic photographs, diary selections, letters, oral histories, and newspaper articles combined with general background. The section on Angel Island includes poems and excerpts of oral histories from former detainees. Grades 5-up.

Hoobler, Dorothy & Thomasl. The Japanese American Family Album. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. This resource documents the lives of Japanese Americans, including their stay at Angel Island, through their diaries, letters, interviews, photos, newspaper articles, and personal reflections. Grades 5-up.

Lee, Milly. Landed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. In this picture book for young children, Lee draws upon her father-in-law’s experience to tell the story of a Chinese immigrant boy coming through Angel Island to join his father in America.

Wong, Li Keng. Good Fortune: My Journey to Gold Mountain.Atlanta: Peachtree Publications, 2006. Wong, a former detainee and teacher, shares the story of her journey to the United States from China through the Angel Island Immigration Station, and her family’s life in Oakland Chinatown. Grades 5-up.

Yep, Laurence & Kathleen S. Yep. The Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Based on the author’s family history and research at the National Archives, this is the story of ten-year-old Gim Lew’s journey from his village in China to America and his trepidations about passing the grueling test at Angel Island. Grades 5-up.

SPICE. Angel Island: The Chinese-American Experience, Stanford, California: SPICE Publications, 2011. This is a graphic novel about Chinese immigrants being detained at Angel Island. The book compares their experience to that of European immigrants at Ellis Island.

For Adults

Barde, Robert Eric. Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island. Westport: Praeger, 2008. Barde examines the history of Asian passenger steamship travel and immigration through Angel Island. The voices of a century ago—of exclusion, bureaucratic and judicial nightmares, fear of foreigners and their diseases, and moral ambiguity and uncertainty—all echo to the present day.

Bustard, Bruce. Attachments: Faces and Stories from America’s Gates. Washington, D.C.: Foundation for the National Archives, 2012. This collection of documents and photographs draws from the millions of immigration case files in the National Archives to tell some of the most gripping stories of immigrants entering, leaving, or staying in America. Many Angel Island stories are included.

Fanning, Bramwell and Wong, William. Images of America: Angel Island. Arcadia Publishers, 2007. This hoto history book has a extensive chapter on the history of the immigration station and on AIISF's efforts to preserve the site.

Fujii, Marie Park. Growing Up American in Papa's World. Honolulu: Belknap Publishing & Design, 2011. This is a heart-warming memoir of the Park family, their immigration to America through Angel Island, and their struggle to survive as farmers in Oregon and Idaho during the Depression years.

Lai, Him Mark, Genny Lim, Judy Yung. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980, 1999. This book contains an overview history of the immigration station, provides oral histories excerpts from former detainees, and documents 135 poems written on the walls in Chinese with English translations. This book can be ordered through AIISF.

Lau, Estelle. Paper Families: Identity, Immigration Administration, and Chinese Exclusion. Durham:Duke University Press, 2007. Lau highlights how immigrant identity formation was a two-way process involving both subterfuge on the part of Chinese immigrants and the relentless efforts of immigration officials to exclude them. She points out that the Exclusion Acts and the pseudo-familial structures that emerged in response have had lasting effects on Chinese American identity and concludes with a look at exclusion’s legacy, including the Confession Program of the 1960s.

Lee, Erika. At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources—including immigration records, oral histories, and letters—Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a “gatekeeping nation.”

Lee, Erika and Judy Yung. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. In this landmark book commemorating the immigration station’s 100th anniversary, Lee and Yung provides a sweeping yet personal history of Chinese “paper sons,” Japanese picture brides Korean refugee students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino repatriates, and many others from around the world. Their experiences on Angel Island reveal how America’s discriminatory immigration policies changed the lives of immigrants and transformed the nation. Watch the trailer here.

Pegler-Gordon, Anna. In Sight of America - Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Using rare photographs and documents culled from the National Archives, Pegler-Gordon examines the impact photography had in implementing immigration policies at Angel Island, Ellis Island, and on the U.S.-Mexico border. The chapters devoted to the Angel Island experience reveal the creativity used by Chinese and Japanese immigrants to set their image in the proper context to garner more favorable treatment.

Rouse Jorae, Wendy. The Children of Chinatown - Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco 1850-1920. Rouse Jorae provides captivating portrayals of young people stranded at the Angel Island Immigration Station, rescued from sexual and domestic abuse in Chinatown, and as marginalized Americans in a racist society. She engages the reader with lively accounts of how the Chinese actively sought to shape their destinies in the face of discrimination, contesting authorities for educational rights and economic equality.

Sakovich, Maria. Congregational Ministry & Advocacy: The Angel Island Immigration Station Era 1910-1940, 2010. This publication was created on the occasion of an interdenominational pilgrimage to Angel Island in 2010. Those profiled include Presbyterian Mission: Donaldina Cameron, Tin Fuk Wu, and Mae Wong; Cumberland Presbyterian Church: Julia McCaslin; Episcopal Church: The Rev. Daniel Wu; Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and National Council of Jewish Women; United Methodist Church: Rev. Edwar Lee and Deaconess Katharine Maurer, Russian Orthodox Church: Father Vladmir Sakovich, and American Baptist Churches, USA: First Chinese Baptist Church, as well as articles on current immigration policy and its parallels with the past. Authors include descendants of those profiled, including Maria Sakovich, and church and community historians.

Soennichsen, John. Miwoks to Missiles: A History of Angel Island. Tiburon: Angel Island Association, 2001. This book covers over two hundred years of the island’s history, from the Miwok Indians and Spanish explorers to the U.S. military, establishment of the immigration station, and transition into a state park. The author’s use of historic photographs and personal recollections bring the island and its people to life in dramatic fashion.

Stavans, Ilan. Becoming Americans - Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing. New York: Library of America, 2009. Comprised mostly of memoirs with some fiction, this volume gathers selections from the writings of 85 immigrants from 45 countries, including Chinese poems from Angel Island, that illustrate the changing views of immigrants in the United States. Through their voices we relive the fears, hopes, and bewilderment of people yearning to be full partners in a nation that alternately welcomes and rejects their presence.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1989. In this narrative history, Takaki tells the richly diverse stories of Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Asian Indians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians who have come to the United States during the past century and a half. He allows these immigrants to speak through their songs, poems, and letters, and weaves their voices into the broad context of American history. Angel Island is covered in the chapter about Chinese immigration.